HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
The Ocracoke Island cove where Blackbeard died in 1718, said to be haunted by his headless ghost
104 Loop Road (Springer's Point Nature Preserve), Ocracoke, NC 27960
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to visit Springer's Point Nature Preserve, the shoreline overlooking Teach's Hole Channel.
Access
Limited Access
122-acre maritime forest preserve with sand and root-covered nature trails leading to the shoreline.
Equipment
Photos OK
Site of Blackbeard's final battle, November 22, 1718 · Blackbeard's 1717–1718 Ocracoke base of operations
Ocracoke Inlet was the only navigable gap for oceangoing ships along a long stretch of North Carolina's Outer Banks, which made it strategically valuable to anyone controlling coastal trade — including pirates. Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, used the island as his base from 1717 into 1718, anchoring near what is now Springer's Point and using the deep channel later named Teach's Hole for his ships.
At dawn on November 22, 1718, Lt. Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy, acting on Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood's orders, engaged Blackbeard's crew in the channel. Contemporary accounts describe a brutal close-quarters fight in which Blackbeard was shot five times and cut more than twenty times before he died. His crew surrendered shortly after. Maynard had Blackbeard's head removed and displayed from his ship's bowsprit as proof of the pirate's death, and accounts from the period describe the headless body being thrown into the water.
The channel and cove have carried the Teach's Hole name since, and the surrounding shoreline is now protected as part of Springer's Point Nature Preserve, managed by the Coastal Land Trust and the National Park Service's Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
Sources
Since at least the nineteenth century, Ocracoke residents and visitors have reported an unexplained light over the water at Teach's Hole, most often on stormy or foggy nights, which local storytellers call Teach's Light. The traditional explanation ties the light to Blackbeard's headless corpse, said to circle the site of his death searching for its severed head; some versions of the story add that his voice can be heard on the wind calling out for it.
Ocracoke's tourism office and several regional ghost-lore writers present the light as one of the island's best-known ghost stories, distinct from the documented history of the battle itself. No scientific investigation has confirmed a consistent phenomenon, and accounts of the light's appearance vary between sources.
Notable Entities
Walk the nature trail through Springer's Point's live oaks and maritime forest to the shoreline overlooking Teach's Hole Channel, the water where Blackbeard made his last stand against Lt. Robert Maynard's Royal Navy sloops on November 22, 1718.
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